“Well, Uncle Harry got the bright idea they could try to find this Ben Overby’s grave. So they could really prove it, you know. Nick knew he was buried up by Victor, and he said his mom was a Methodist. So my dad drove him and Harry and my sister around the county all afternoon in the rain to all these little cemeteries, until they found it.”

“And?”

“Sure enough, good old Ben had died in 1916. Not 1918, like Nick’s mom had said. There it was, carved right in stone. There was no way he could have been Nick’s dad.”

“Oh,” Dolly said, pressing her hand to her mouth.

“So they dropped Nick off at the depot on the way back home.”

“They made him leave? Just like that?”

JJ shrugged. “He insisted on it, I guess.”

“Didn’t he even want to face your grandpa? To get him to admit he was his father?”

“It seemed pretty clear Grandpa didn’t want anything to do with him. I guess Nick didn’t want to make matters worse than they already were, for Lissa’s sake. But, man, when they came back to the house without him, she didn’t stop crying for about three hours. Mom and Dad and Harry kept trying to calm her down, telling her it was for the best that he’d left and all. And meanwhile, here’s Grandma in the parlor just playing that same sonata, over and over for hours.”

“What about your grandpa? Where was he?”

“He never showed back up, so they ended up going out looking for him. They brought Liss over to her friend’s house, and they brought Grandma with them. They had to practically drag her away from that piano, I guess. But they thought maybe she’d know where he’d gone. My dad called up his buddy the sheriff and got the whole county started looking for Grandpa.”

“Who stayed with you?”

“Anne. She volunteered to take care of me. It turned out she had kind of a thing for me.” He grinned, and reached for a cigarette. “Who could really blame her?”

Dolly raised her eyebrows. JJ decided for sure then: He would tell it his way, and make Dolly think the best of him.

Never mind that, if Anne told it, she might say something different.

Chapter 69

THE MICKELSON HOUSE
502 W. First Street, Pine Rapids
Thursday, November 22, 1945